Poor Crops in Hebrides
SERIOUS EFFECT ON SOCIAL LIFE OF PEOPLE
A memorandum has been prepared and issued by the Office of Edinburgh at the joint request the Board of Agriculture, the Board of Health, and the Fishery Board showing the abnormal weather conditions experienced in the Hebrides last year, together with statement by the Board of Agriculture regarding the effect of the weather on the crops in Skye and the Outer Hebrides.
The memorandum concludes as follows:
There no doubt that in the Hebrides and the north-west of Scotland the six months' period from May to October, 1923, was exceptionally wet and stormy. The persistence of the rainfall was abnormal, and apparently unprecedented. The exceptional character of the month June in respect to sunshine must have been a factor of great importance.
In the course of its statement the Board Agriculture states that Skye and the Outer Hebrides extend altogether area of 1,145,000 acres, or 1800 square miles. But of this great area only 80,000 acres, or one in fourteen, are under crops and permanent grass.
Rough Pasture
There are 850,000 acres of rough glazings, and the remaining area mainly accounted for by deer forests in Lewis and Harris, extending to over 100,000 acres.
Of the farm and croft land, 32,000 acres are arable and 48,000 acres are under permanent grass. This land is divided into 7700 holdings, of which 99 per cent, are under 50 acres and about 3600 do not exceed five acres. The rough grazings, which extend more than ten times the area of the farm and croft land, carry a stock of about 100,000 ewes, the total sheep stock in June being about a quarter million.
The article proceeds with the following tables:
The meteorological conditions prevailing during the period May to October, 1923, give the reason for these startling figures. The total rainfall during these six months was not the largest on record, nor was the total deficiency of sunshine. But the uniform occurrence of these phenomena throughout the summer and autumn, without relief, was unprecedented, and fully accounted for the poor crops of cereals and potatoes that were obtained. Turnips and hay, on the other hand, thrive better in a damp season than cereals and potatoes. The cumulative effects of the failure in varying degrees of crops, fishing, peat-digging, and kelp-burning on the social and economic life these districts, where at the best there is but a poor living to be won from the land or the sea, are indeed disastrous.
Percentage Deficiencies for each Crop by Location
Oats Barley/Bere Potatoes
Skye 57% n/a 73%
Lewis 56% 50% 81%
Harris etc 37% 40% 57%
Overall the deficiency in 1923 was 73%, almost three-quarters of the total.
Source: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000577/19240117/100/0008
Aberdeen Press and Journal - Thursday 17 January 1924
Image © D.C.Thomson & Co. Ltd
Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD
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